One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest

BC -

She was attractive and progressive looking lady of 25 years old from Mosul. Her father was a high ranked officer during the Saddam government but later fell out of favor with the ex-dictator and was arrested and eventually executed in 2002.

It was a fine day back in September 2005 when she left work to go back home, and while she was riding a taxi in Al-Ghazaliya area two cars pulled up and forced the taxi to pull over. Several masked men surrounded her and the taxi driver, but unlike the taxi driver she was taken away on the accusation that she was working as an interpreter for the occupation authority, and that in fact she did.

The first group of kidnappers kept her for 5 days in derelict houses, and continued to move her from one house to another until they handed her over to a second group where she remained for another 5 days, during which she, unlike other kidnapped foreign who put weight on during their ordeals, was almost beaten to death to make her confess. They savagely flogged her arms and back and they made sure to inflect the severest pain to her face. She was whipped to a point she began to feel her body pain against her internal organs when she moved. It was indescribable feeling. Her feet and hands were constantly cuffed with tight wires. She was punched, electrocuted, dragged, and hanged upside down. And when she reached an utterly pitiful state alive she was turned over to another group of men whom she overheard talking feverishly about her as being clinically dead.

She remained with that third group until the end in what seemed a desolate house where not a jetfighter, a helicopter or even a single shot was heard! It was complete silence. She didn’t even know if she was inside or outside Iraq because during the transportation she was delirious.

That house was quite large and full of people where she immediately received medical treatment and ‘blood transfusion!’ by a young doctor (he was referred to as doctor). When she began to regain her strength she noticed how clean and well groomed the men looked. Plenty of them had their own ‘new looking’ laptops at all times. She noticed how polite and well articulated the young (22-25 years old) Iraqi men were who resembled university students.

She heard voices of other Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula in the house too. And when she finally began to come around and commenced to ‘chew the food properly’, which was sometimes served by one-eyed or one-armed men! who did not cry a single word, her kidnappers told her that ‘they are of Al-Azarqawi!’ and she should be content that she is staying with ‘his women and children’. The most peculiar thing is that these women never blurted a word of Arabic or in any other language. The voices of the children did not sound quiet Arabic! The women wore long black dresses head to toe with faces totally covered. They were responsible for bathing her. She was sure they were white women and not men from their hands, and she kept wondering were these women Iraqis, Arabs or even foreign!

A few days later Imam was brought in to identify her as an occupiers collaborator. Her kidnappers showed him the photo that the Imam had apparently provided the perpetrators with. But when the Imam saw her in person with this horrendous situation she says he was appalled and insisted that the kidnappers had the wrong woman and a row erupted between the Imam and the kidnappers about the real identity.

She had finally and single-handedly brokered a deal with the abductors! And she began her ‘educational and rehab programs’. These programs pertained films about special operations to combat spies, and it contained slaughtering scenes, amputating of body parts, breaking of jaws and plucking heads off with large pair of ‘circular tongs!’ They showed her films about surgically removing eyes, arms, and legs of men of different ages. And how those crippled or blind men are being led while wrapped with bombs into crowded areas to detonate them with a remote control.

After her release she went through three months of traumatic agony that had pushed her several times to the edge of suicide, during which she gotten into an analyzing daze: how could the kidnappers know her route back home and her working hours if they were constantly variables? How come the invaders never attempted to rescue her or bothered to ask for her when she was kidnapped and after her release? She remembered how a male interpreter was kidnapped from an undisclosed area and later killed.

When we met her last she was totally convinced that there are certain sinister elements amongst the invaders, to include Iraqis, who in due time would roll those cooperating Iraqis that are ‘dispensable’ down to that other end of the dark tunnel.

Although she seemed that she’s been scarred for life she has decided to turn a page on that indelible experience and to shake that ‘depleted’ dust off her shoulders. She got a new job with a home grown Iraqi company and she is thinking that one day she ‘might be able’ to get married.


Update 14-11-06:
she has finally tightened the knout with a married man!